The effect of cell-attachment on the group of self-equivalences of an elliptic space (Q2167791)

A simply connected rational space \(X\) is called elliptic if the two graded vector spaces \(H^*(X;\mathbb{Q})\) and \(\pi_*(X)\) are finite dimensional, and the number \(m=\max\{i:H^i(X;\mathbb{Q})\not= 0\}\) is called the formal dimension of \(X\). Let \(\mathcal{E}(X)\) denote the group of homotopy classes of self-homotopy equivalences of \(X\), and \(\mathcal{E}_*(X)\) denotes the subgroup of \(\mathcal{E}(X)\) consisting of all \(f\in \mathcal{E}(X)\) inducing the identity on homology groups. From now on, let \(X\) be a simply connected rational elliptic space of formal dimension \(m\), and let \(Y\) be the space obtained by attaching rational cells of dimension \(q\) to \(X\). In this paper the author studies the relation between \(\mathcal{E}(X)\) and \(\mathcal{E}(Y)\) (resp. \(\mathcal{E}_*(X)\) and \(\mathcal{E}_*(Y)\)) by using the Quillen model of rational homotopy theory. In particular, he proves that there are isomorphisms \(\mathcal{E}(Y)\cong \mathrm{GL}(r,\mathbb{Q})\times\mathcal{E}(X)\) and \(\mathcal{E}_*(Y)\cong\mathcal{E}_*(X)\) if \(q>2m+1\) and \(r=\dim H_q(X;\mathbb{Q})\). As an application, he also proves that for any finite group \(G\) and any positive integer \(r\), there exists a simply connected space \(X\) such that \(\mathcal{E}(X)\cong \mathrm{GL}(r,\mathbb{Q})\times G\). His proof is based on the analysis of the Quillen model of \(\mathcal{E}_*(X)\).